> The amount of radiation exposure is really quite small compared to the amount you'd receive on the actual flight.
One difference. I get something back from the flight. I get to be in another place rather fast. I am willing to take a small radiation dose for it. I am not getting anything back from being scanned by a Rapiscan (that is the name of the company that makes most of them).
That's horrible logic. To carry it to absurdity: the flight gets you from A to B rather quickly - why all the delays while they, you know, put fuel and peanuts into the plane? They should just do away with that, it's not the flight, all you need is the flight.
Similarly: buy 1 get 1 free? Why not just give out the free one?
As absurd as the security theater is, it's part of the packaged deal that includes "the flight". The radiation from the machines may not be part of the physical act of moving you from A to B, but that doesn't mean they can just be removed.
And given the number of test firearms that the TSA manages to get through the carry-on X-ray, it'd hardly be reassuring even if the full-body X-ray turned out to be useful.
You still don't make any sense. Here is activity A: flying. Here is activity B: walking through a Rapiscan machine.
One can do activity A & B independently. One can board a plan and fly ( I just did recently, got into a line that didn't have an x-ray machine and flew). Or one can do B -- keep buying tickets and go through security without flying and just do that all day.
Now the argument was both activities will blast you with x-rays so at least "logically it doesn't make sense to complain about one but not the other". My comment was that it is not the same, there is a difference. I am willing to engage in activity A because that gets me from one place to another faster. I am not willing to engage in activity B because I get nothing for it. You said it yourself it is security theater, so I get nothing but harm from it. Therefore it the two activities are not the same.
> The radiation from the machines may not be part of the physical act of moving you from A to B, but that doesn't mean they can just be removed.
I am confused since to you it seems that having the ability to fly without being blasted by x-rays and be seen naked by some underpaid TSA guy is such an outlandish thing.
Are you a teenager? Do you remember flying before 9/11? Do you remember how we had daily airport bombings and hijackings? (Yeah, neither do I). Then do you remember how many terrorists TSA caught red-handed, just about to board on the plane with an explosive device in all these years? I do - 0.
Then you acknowledge it is security theater but somehow claim that we need it. Sorry but that doesn't make any sense.
One difference. I get something back from the flight. I get to be in another place rather fast. I am willing to take a small radiation dose for it. I am not getting anything back from being scanned by a Rapiscan (that is the name of the company that makes most of them).